As fossil fuels become rarer and more expensive, monitoring your electrical usage is smart. Figuring out how to cut waste saves you a ton of money because the savings occur month after month, year after year.
Electrical usage is measured in kilowatt hours. The watt is a measure of work performed or energy consumed. A kilowatt hour is simply one kilowatt of energy being consumed for one hour.
The average home electrical usage is a little under 9000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electrical power in a year. This averages out to 24.38 kWh per day. This figure varies from home to home and depends on the insulation of the home and the weather in the area where the home is located. The weather plays a major role because space heating is the largest single energy consumption factor in a typical home. Space heating can account for as much as 48% of the total usage figure. On the other hand, cooling usually accounts for only 7% although this would be slightly higher in an area with high daily temperatures.
Appliances and lighting make up an estimated 31% of the total usage. This is the area where usage habits can result in the greatest variation in total electrical power consumption. How appliances are use and what type of appliances they are can have a radical impact on the usage and the electrical bills. There are several ways to determine the usage figures of individual appliances.
Almost every appliance will have a tag that gives its watt consumption. It is important to remember that this figure is usually the maximum wattage of the unit and not its average usage amount. You can still use this figure to calculate the cost of operation. Based on an average electrical cost figure, a 75 watt light bulb will cost around 6 cents per 10 hours of operation. A clothes dryer will use about 41 cents per load. A 10 SEER air conditioning unit will use around $58 per month when in use.
There are several ways to reduce the electrical consumption of your home and save money on your monthly bills. Of course, simply not using appliances will result in savings. There are ways to accomplish a reduction without sacrificing the benefits of electricity. Simple common sense tells you to turn lights and appliances off when not in use. A slight decrease in thermostat settings on a heater or air conditioning unit can have a dramatic effect on consumption. Since heat is such an electricity hog, taking shorter showers would be a cost cutter. A load of wash in a washing machine will cost about 30.1 cents on hot/hot cycle and only about 2.5 cents on cold/cold cycle. The age and condition of an appliance has a big impact also. A refrigerator built in 1975 will cost about $12.20 to operate for a month, but a refrigerator built in 2003 will cost only about $3.76 a month.
Tags: Home Improvement
